Budget Analysis Continues

May 16, 2014 By

Gov. Brown’s “May revision” budget continues to draw attention and analysis, and the Sacramento Business Journal has a good take on how the spending plan pushes court finding issues past November’s election cycle. The BizJournal reports that “… the proposed budget revise points to a new workload-based funding model to allocate money where most needed. The document also expresses support for a two-year strategy to court stabilization that takes time to evaluate and modernize court operations.”

Then it adds: Yet “the administration has been clear that state-funded entities should not expect restorations of reductions — moving forward, government has to be done differently,” the section of the budget summary on the judicial branch reads. That is likely to disappoint labor leaders who hoped some of the nearly 4,000 jobs eliminated over the past years might be reclaimed. Read the BizJournal story here:

California’s trial courts get more money in state budget, but not enough to maintain status quo – Sacramento Business Journal

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , ,

More Courts Charging Fees For Online Records

May 14, 2014 By
 
More California courts are joining Los Angeles in charging people to look at civil court records online, raising concerns among some public access groups and others. Starting April 23, Alameda County Superior Court charges $1 for each of the first five pages of a civil court record downloaded online, with the cost dropping to 50 per page after that and capped at $40 total.
 
Los Angeles Superior Court fees start $4.75 for each record searched. Teresa Ruano, spokeswoman for the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts, says that “… there’s a budget crisis in the courts. Revenue is part of the solution, a small part of the solution.”
 

You can read the AP story in the Greenfield Reporter here.  

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , ,

Chief Justice Continues Funding Push

May 5, 2014 By
The “Tani tour” continues, and California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye may be warning wealthy communities, that may have  been spared extreme court cuts so far, that their services might soon suffer from a lack of funding. That’s because new state spending formulas take population into consideration, so slow-growth communities will feel the pain.
 
That talking point emerged at the Marin County Civic Center where, the Marin Independent Journal reports, “… Cantil-Sakauye described the judiciary as desperately underfunded, having been forced to cut about $1 billion since the economic downturn began around 2008. The cuts have forced the closure of 51 courthouses in the system, even as it struggles to digest 7.5 million new cases a year in a state of 38 million people speaking scores of languages.”

After the statewide message, Kim Turner, executive director of Marin Superior Court, “… said Marin has fared better than other counties because its population has not exploded. But she said Marin stands to lose money as court funding is spread to counties in dire shape.”

 
“It’s going to hurt,” Turner said, as quoted by the Independent Journal. “It’s going to require some belt-tightening.”
 
You can read the full story here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Fighting Over Those Three Little Words

March 12, 2014 By
 
In the non-campaign yawn-fest that is the usual Los Angeles Superior Court judicial election, the most vital strategy doesn’t involve talking points or focus groups. Instead, the big deal is how candidates are identified on the ballot. It seems “prosecutor” is a coveted title. 

Or even a “Deputy City Prosecutor.” The MetNews is reporting that B. Otis Felder, who is running for the judgeship being vacated by Michael Nash, is arguing that he can use that delegation because he was a full-time prosecutor in the “Volunteer Attorney Training Program” run by the L.A. City Attorney’s office. Responding to critics, he said that volunteer work is prosecutor enough. Critics say there may be a formal complaint to change the designation.

Another interesting candidate is Pamala F. Matsumoto, who is self-identified as an “Administrative Law Judge,” and is one of the former Superior Court referees dismissed during the 2012 budget cuts.

Here’s the MetNews report.

Here’s the new Los Angeles Times election coverage page, which offers a broad election story and mentions the Superior Court election only once, and then to dismiss it.

 
Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Pasadena ‘Walk-Up’ Window Cuts Wait Times

February 27, 2014 By
 
Courts across California are reporting long lines for relatively routine issues, like traffic tickets, but at Pasadena a new walk-up window is letting people bypass even entering the courthouse, which means not going through the security lines and reduced wait times.
 
The Courthouse News is reporting that Supervising Judge Mary Thornton House called the new window a huge success and said it would reduce long waits and lines, adding that the court would like to install more walk-up windows, but structurally the building can only accommodate one.
 
Judge House also noted in the CN that the recent L.A. County Superior Courtco consolidation plan led the Pasadena courthouse to assume Alhambra traffic cases… “so our traffic matters were doubled, which created very long lines and required people to go through weapons screening simply to pay a ticket.” The report also noted a Yelp user who said it had taken him two hours to pay a $238 traffic ticket. The report also says members of the public still need to visit the clerk’s office to request traffic school, or pay traffic citations that have already been sent to collections. Check out the story here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , ,

CCM Publisher Makes A Case On HuffPo

February 12, 2014 By
 

The Huffington Post has published a piece by Sara Warner illustrating how courts in a city can run very differently from the rest of the state they are in. She makes the case that Los Angeles, and the L.A. County Superior Court, are very different in how they handle judicial rationing. But she also notes that you see the contrasts in other places that illustrate that city-state trend, like Newport News, Virginia.

 
That city made a “judicial hellholes” list despite being in what a national business magazine identified as the most business-friendly in the nation, at least in terms of its lawsuit landscape.
 
You can read Sara’s post here.
Filed Under: Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , ,

South Asian PAC Alleges Racism In L.A. Judge’s Elections

February 10, 2014 By
 
The MetNews is playing it calmly, but a new South Asian Bar Association Political Action Committee is not being shy about alleging racial bias against judges of South Asian decent. Noting that the PAC is “separate” from the bar association, its organizers point to the 2012 race between Judge Sanjay Kumar and Kim Smith, a Hawthorne Deputy City Attorney.
 
PAC organizers say that despite Smith being rated as “not qualified” by the Los Angeles County Bar Association and Kumar being rated “exceptionally well qualified,” the race was closer than they thought it should be. In fact, an attorney and PAC organizer is quoted by MetNews as saying that “… the South Asian community was shocked that this happened.”
 
The group has reportedly been raising money in SoCal and in San Francisco to warn the community of the “political challenges” faced by the situation.  Read the MetNews story here. 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , ,

L.A. Supervisors Face Juvenile Justice Issue

February 4, 2014 By
 
A juvenile policy attorney and former public defender has an opinion piece making the rounds that makes a great argument for increasing funding to the Los Angeles juvenile justice system, but for once the issue is up to county officials instead of the wise ones in Sacramento. Carol Chodroff explains how the current attorney appointment scheme relies on a flat-fee contract that seems nearly designed for poor outcomes.
 
In her piece, which has appeared in both the Huffington Post and CityWatch, she reports that “… Los Angeles has one of the largest juvenile justice systems in the world, processing approximately 20,000 youths annually. About 11,000 of these youths are ineligible for representation by the public defender because of a conflict of interest. They are represented instead by appointed panel attorneys who receive a flat fee of approximately $350 for the life of a case, regardless of its complexity.
 
The bad news from this is that “… this perverse compensative scheme penalizes panel attorneys for doing the work required to zealously represent youthful clients. The resulting arbitrary and disparate treatment of children in the Los Angeles juvenile delinquency system is destructive, expensive, and unconstitutional.” But she also notes  that the good news is “… next week, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will hear an important motion introduced by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas to examine and recommend improvements to the delinquency representation system. The Board of Supervisors should pass this critical motion.”
 
You can read her argument in support of the county motion, via CityWatch, here.
 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Some Teens Get A Special Court

January 31, 2014 By
 
One more alternative to California’s traditional justice system: Santa Monica High School has become the latest Los Angeles County school to adopt a “teen court” approach that lets fellow students judge their peers. The Santa Monica Daily Press reports that the program, launched in 1992, offers teenagers a voluntary alternative to delinquency court and the crime can be removed from their record.
 
The first court featured a visit from the police chief and several judges, but the teenagers handled the actual case themselves, according to a story by David Mark Simpson. The story follows a case of middle school computer hacking and how it gets handled. Citing a program official, the newspaper says the program has grown to include 23 schools.
 
The defendants, who are from other schools, opted to be tried by a jury of their peers rather than go to delinquency court. The incentive to be tried by a group of adolescents: The crime is expunged from their record.
See the story here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Civil Court Delays Lead To ‘Private’ Divorce Judges

January 30, 2014 By
 
California’s court delays may be frustrating many, but for some the solution might be “private judges” and opting into an alternative system. At “divorcehelp.com,” the private website warns that “.. although California law states that a couple can be divorced in six months and one day from the time one spouse is correctly served with proper divorce documents by the other, the reality is that it can take much, much longer.  One of the biggest culprits is the massive delays in the California court system.”
 
In some counties, the website contends, “… this means that it can take months or years to make it through the system, even in uncontested divorce cases. For example, initial divorce documents filed in Los Angeles County in April of 2013 were not being processed until December.

The service offers “mediation and private judge services” built upon 25 years of working with the court system. In other words, if you can afford the service you have a chance to bypass the gridlock. This is clearly something we’ll be seeing more of as the state dismantles its civil courts system. 
 
Check out the website here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , ,
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